Month: February 2016

“People are so uptight now. You can’t tell a joke without offending someone.”
Yes, we are woke now. We have learned and unlearned, in so doing have grown and shifted our thinking, and have since become aware of how egregious the things we thought innocuous really are.
A good example is Leon Schuster. His use of blackface went unchallenged until we realised how offensive it was. His use of blackfaced characters isn’t just historically offensive, though that in itself is more than enough reason to permanently gag him. The characters he portrays in blackface are the worst caricatures of black culture. A decade ago he was the most popular comedian in Southern Africa, but the wokeness has led to the realisation that the laughs were at the expense of black people.
We realised that we had internalised prejudices and are working hard to overcome them. Also, those jokes that perpetuate stereotypes? Yeah, we realise how shitty they are.